laire, a little tremulously. "I only wished I had some,
Jean, to while away the time. For this law-learned Professor will say
nothing but rude things to me!"

Jean looked from one to the other, to make sure that the girl was
jesting. His brow cleared. Then again a gleam of fierce joy passed
momently over his face.

"_He_ had comfits in his hand in a silver box," he said, "jeweller's
work of a cunning artificer. And he entered among us like the Lord of
All. But it was given to me--to me, Jean-aux-Choux, to bring low the
haughty head. 'Guise, the good Guise!' Ha! ha! But I sent him to Hattil,
the place of an howling for sin--he that had thought to walk in Ahara,
the sweet savouring meadows!"

"I hated Guise and all his works," said the Professor, looking at the
ex-fool boldly, "yet will I never call his death aught but a murder most
foul."

"It may be--it may be," said Jean-aux-Choux indifferently; "I did my
Lord's work for an unworthy master. I would as soon have set the steel
to the throat of Henry of Valois himself. He and that mother of his, now
also gone to the Place of Howling to hob-nob with her friend of
Guise--they planned the killing. I did it. I give thanks! Michaeiah--who
is like the Lord? Jedaiah--the hand of the Lord hath wrought it.
Jehoash-Berak--the fire of the Lord falls in the thunderbolt! Amen!"

The Professor started to his feet.

"What is that you say? The Queen-Mother dead? And you----?"

He looked at the long dagger Jean-aux-Choux carried at his side, which,
every time he shifted his cloak, drew the unwilling gaze of Claire Agnew
like a fascination.

"The Mother of Witchcrafts is indeed dead," said Jean-aux-Choux. "But
that the world owes not to me. The hand of God, and not mine, sent her
to her own place. Yet I saw in a vision the Woman drunken with the blood
of saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus."

Then he, who had once been called the King's fool, became, as it were,
transported. His eyes, directed at something unseen across the blue and
sleeping sea, were terrible to behold. Faint greyish flecks of foam
appeared on his lips. He cast his cloak on the ground and trod upon it,
crying, "Even thus is it to-day with Great Babylon, the mystery, the
mother of the abominations of the earth."

After a moment's pause he took up his prophecy.

"There was One who came and bade me listen, and I gave him no heed, for
he blessed when I would have cursed; he cried 'Preserve' when I